Ban On School Censorship Has Campus, Capitol Allies

Administrators Wary Rumors Will Creep Into Student Papers

SIMSBURY — When the Simsbury High School newspaper attempted to publish allegations against the school's football coach, students said, administrators blocked the article.

To get their message out, students sneaked in a coded message in a sequence of pictures on soda bottle labels that pictured a fist, a stop sign, a group of students, and football coach Joe Grace, suggesting that he was hitting players. After seeing the pictures, the newspaper's adviser quit and school administrators suspended the newspaper's publication for the rest of the year, saying students acted irresponsibly.

Situations like this have prompted a group of students statewide to push for a bill that would ban boards of education from censoring student newspapers. If passed, Connecticut would join six other states, including Massachusetts, that have enacted laws that give student newspapers freedom of speech protection.

``The bill we're trying to push through will enable students to print their opinions,'' said Ben Smilowitz, a senior at Hall High School in West Hartford and chairman of the International Student Activism Alliance, the youth group promoting the bill.

How those state laws mesh with a Supreme Court ruling that gives school districts considerable control over what goes into school-funded publications has yet to be decided.

For many students, the school newspaper is where they learn what's really going on, Smilowitz said.

Simsbury school administrators said that in the Coach Grace case, they were preventing the students from publishing unconfirmed rumors. Grace has denied the allegations, and the school district said it investigated the charges and found them without merit.

The bill, a version of which has passed the legislature's education committee, calls for each school district to adopt a freedom of expression code that prevents student censorship unless the material is deemed libelous or slanderous. Simsbury officials said they were concerned about libel and slander when the students asked to write about the football coach.

Legislators expect more revisions before some version of the bill is passed this session.

``There were enough instances of what appeared to be abuse of students' rights that we'd be well served to have some guidelines out there,'' said state Rep. Thomasina Clemons, D-Vernon, who sponsored the bill.

Students say administrators often restrict what they can write in student publications.

``We did what we had to do,'' said Simsbury High School junior Brendan Sullivan, who arranged the photos of the soda bottles. He said his school has often denied students the ability to write about what they wanted. ``Kids are kind of kept on a short leash.''

He said the paper's last issue was canceled because the adviser quit after the message appeared in the paper. He said the school newspaper will continue publishing again once a new adviser is found.

Clemons said she has rewritten the bill several times to satisfy concerns about students printing threats.

She said the bill has faced criticism from school administration and board of education groups who say school districts need the authority to monitor the content of student publications.

``The school district has to have some sort of control over the product,'' said Nick Caruso, a spokesman for the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education. He said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that school boards have the right to control what goes into student publications.

In fact, school districts have great leeway in deciding what a student can and cannot write in school- funded publications.

``All school officials have to show is that they have a reasonable educational justification for their decision [to censor],'' said Michael Heistand, a lawyer for the Student Press Law Center, a non-profit group based in Virginia that monitors high school journalism.

In a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision, the court ruled that school districts have the right to censor student publications for almost any reason. The new anti-censorship laws in six states give student journalists some measure of protection from censorship, but the Supreme Court has not ruled on whether these laws are constitutional.

Heistand said school districts' censorship of student publications sends the wrong message.

``It teaches that the news is basically what the people at the top say it is,'' Heistand said. ``That's pretty dangerous stuff.''

Smilowitz said West Hartford administrators prevented his high school's newspaper 18 months ago from writing about a teacher who was suspected of improperly assisting students preparing for the Connecticut Academic Performance Test. The article ran in the student paper after the case was settled.

``Too many times administrators censor material that shouldn't be censored,'' said Smilowitz.